---
title: "About Texas Linux Fest"
url: "https://www.texaslinuxfest.org/about/"
description: "Texas Linux Fest is a volunteer-run, non-profit community conference for Linux, open source and free software, held annually in Texas since 2010."
date: 2026-08-21
site: "Texas Linux Fest"
---

# About Texas Linux Fest


Texas Linux Fest is a community conference for Linux, open source and free
software. It has run in Texas since 2010, and apart from the years lost to the
pandemic it happens annually. The festival moves around the state — it has been
held in Austin, San Antonio, San Marcos and Irving — and each edition gets its
own website for that year's schedule, talks and registration. This site is the
permanent home that ties those editions together.

## Who runs it

Texas Linux Fest is organized entirely by volunteers and is an educational
non-profit organization. Nobody is paid to put the event on. Our mission is to
bring good technical content to Texas and to build up the technical community
here, which means keeping the event affordable, keeping it in Texas, and keeping
it welcoming.

## What the event is like

We have had excellent keynotes over the years — from Karen Sandler and Matt Lee
to Dustin Kirkland — but the part we care most about is the rest of the
schedule. Texas Linux Fest is deliberately friendly to people giving their first
talk as well as their hundredth. A first-time speaker gets the same room, the
same audience and the same help preparing as anyone else. Talks cover the whole
range of the ecosystem: kernel and systems work, distributions, security,
developer tooling, community and governance, and the practical business of
running open source in production.

Attendance is open to anyone. You do not need to be a developer, a Texan, or
already involved in open source to come. A large share of every audience is
people who showed up curious and stayed for the next ten years.

## History

The first Texas Linux Fest was held at The Marchesa in Austin in April 2010.
Since then the festival has been hosted at the Hilton Austin, the Norris
Conference Center in San Antonio, the AT&T Conference Center at UT Austin, the
Austin Convention Center, the San Marcos Conference Center, the Irving
Convention Center, the Palmer Events Center, and the Commons Conference Center
at UT Austin. Every edition has its own page on this site listing the venue,
the dates, the keynotes, a link to that year's schedule, and the press and
podcast coverage from that year.

## Finding the current event

The home page of this site always links to the next Texas Linux Fest. Schedules,
call for papers, ticketing and sponsorship for a given year are handled on that
year's own site, not here.